Sunday, March 25, 2012

Punching In at Pizza Factory

Pizza Factory

214 W. Route 66

Williams, AZ 86046

After a long day we did not want to go to a sit down restaurant. We had driven from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon, and then back to our motel in Williams. When we were checking in at the Howard Johnson's, we enquired about a pizza place in the area. The woman at the desk mentioned Pizza Factory, saying that it is better than Pizza Hut. With that ringing endorsement, how could we not choose to try it?.

I was surprised to learn that Pizza Factory is a chain pizza place. I have never heard of them before. When I was writing this review I looked it up and they have 120 units in five western states. They started in 1979 in Oakhurst, California, and by 1985 they started franchising their concept across the west. One reason I may have never heard of this pizza place before was that they seem to open in out of the way places. Some of their restaurants are located in; Orofino ID, Lovelock NV, Medical Lake WA, and Weed CA. Not exactly big cities on this list.

The City of Williams definitely fits in on this list as well. After checking into the motel, we called Pizza Factory to order one of their pizzas to go. The very friendly voice on the other end took the order and told us it would be twenty minutes. We braved the 19 degree cold and got to the pizza place fifteen minutes later. The pizza was all ready for us. There were about five other parties eating at the restaurant. This was your average pizza place, with a few video games in the corner, some TVs showing some sporting events, and a small salad bar off to the side. We were eager to get back to the motel and relax, so we grabbed some red pepper packets and Parmesan cheese and hunkered down for the night.

As you can see from the pictures above we went with a pretty basic pizza, Large Pepperoni and Sausage on half, then Olives and Pepperoni on the other side. Before biting into the pizza I noticed that they were very generous with the toppings here, especially the olives. Of course I have never known a pizza place to go easy on the olives. It seems like they use a dump truck to pour them on top of pizzas. Anyways, this pizza was still hot after our five minute drive back to the motel. The crust was pretty good here, nice chew and decent flavor. It did its job of holding the toppings, and staying firm. The cheese was okay, and the toppings were plentiful. A pretty solid pizza, and definitely better than Pizza Hut.

Out of five route markers, (because the city of Williams was the last to have its section of Route 66 bypassed in 1984), five being best to zero being worst, Pizza Factory gets 2.5 route markers.